Catherine Texier's new book, Breakup, traces the details of her breakup with husband Joel Rose. They're both writers; together they published the legendary lit mag Between C & D: The Lower East Side Fiction Magazine, and edited the celebrated anthology Love Is Strange; separately they've published several novels each. It seems that love is even stranger than Texier could have imagined--even after she found out about Rose's long-running affair with his editor, she couldn't quite bring herself to have the appropriate feelings of the dish-breaking variety. Breakup is exhaustive and tenacious in its exploration of the spaces between expectation and actuality, among what we see on the big screen, hear from friends and family, read in self-help books, and how we really feel when "it" happens to us. Texier will be reading from Breakup at Black Oak Books on Thursday. My only question: will Rose's next novel be called Reno-Vation or Alimony?

Catherine Texier will read from Breakup on Thursday, September 17, at Black Oak Books in Berkeley (1491 Shattuck) at 7:30 p.m. (510-486-0698)

Nicholas Evans, who "enthralled audiences all over the world" (according to his bookjacket bio) with his first novel, The Horse Whisperer, has published another volume set in the breathtaking Rocky Mountain region of Mont. The Loop may well do for wolves what The Horse Whisperer did for horses (i.e., set 'em up with six-digit roles in Hollywood movies).

The story involves a pack of wolves that inexplicably returns to the ranching town of Hope, Montana, for better or worse. Helen Post, a 29-year-old wolf biologist (and I think we all know a few of those), wants to protect the wolves from the ranchers who seek to destroy them. Alas, she falls in love with the son of her most powerful opponent, resulting in a dangerous-but-redemptive love among the bigger-than-life American West kind of situation. There's a lot of cool writing about wolves, too. Evans did his homework--on the acknowledgments page, he thanks Barry Lopez and Peter Steinhart, among other naturalists. There's no wolf whispering in The Loop, but get ready for plenty of fur, fangs, and hunt-blue eyes.

Nicholas Evans reads from The Loop on Wednesday, September 15, at Book Passage (51 Tamal Vista Blvd.) in Corte Madera at 7:30 p.m. (927-0960); on Thursday, September 16, he'll be lunching at Vivande in Opera Plaza as part of A Clean Well Lighted Place's Literary Lunch series (931-9248)

If you liked the movie "Bad Lieutenant" with everyone's favorite bare-assed bad-boy Harvey Keitel (during the penultimate scene where Keitel pulls over two teenaged girls and jerks off in their faces in exchange for sparing them a speeding ticket, my friend whispered to me, "Oh, I get it: he's a bad lieutenant!"), you'll love Irvine Welsh's new novel, Filth (another subtly evocative title).

Welsh, who levitated to international cult status with his 1992 vernacular novel of heroin-addicted Edinburgh slackers, Trainspotting, is trying his hand at hard-boiled detective noir with a twist.

Filth's narrator, an out-of-control dirty Edinburgh cop, is about to embark on his annual week of sex, drugs, and debauchery in Amsterdam (a.k.a. Law Enforcement Conference), but his rockin' good time is hindered by his massive cocaine habit, his genital eczema and, oh yes, a murder. Picture Jim and Hunter S. spliced into the same Thompson. The bookjacket copy calls Filth "...a dark and disturbing and often scabrously funny novel about the abuse of everything and everybody." Sounds vivid. Mr. Welsh will be making a rare appearance this Saturday at--where else?--Edinburgh Castle (where Trainspotting was staged in SF) on Geary.

Irvine Welsh will read from Filth on Saturday night, September 18, at Edinburgh Castle (950 Geary St.) at 9 p.m. (885-4074)Saturday, September 19

Edwidge Danticat has a literary curriculum vitae that most young novelists would kill for. Her first two books, Krik-Krak, and Breath, Eyes, Memory were published by major publishers before she was 25, to outstanding reviews. In 1996 she made Granta's short-list of Best Young American Novelists (a list, I might add, from which such young geniuses as David Foster Wallace and William Vollman were absent); and last year she won a prestigious Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Award (a cash prize giant enough to cause involuntary drooling in many writers). Her new novel, The Farming of Bones, is set in 1937 on the Dominican side of the Haitian border, and it tells the political story of a romance between a Haitian maid and a field hand. Danticat's prose is strong and invigorating, and her political savvy is well-researched and heartfelt. It's easy to see why her writing has garnered such praise; it's fresh and readable with a solid backbone of integrity.

Edwidge Danticat will read from The Farming of Bones on Saturday, September 19, at Diesel Books (5433 College Ave.) in Oakland at 7:30 p.m. (510-653-9965)